


Circles, Lines And Arrows

by Andian



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 21:51:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2244621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth can set you free but it can also be quite dangerous as Steve finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circles, Lines And Arrows

There are arrows and dotted lines and circles in the sky and they move and tell a truth only Steve can hear, one he'd show to Janice.  
He sees them move above him -circles and dotted arrows and lines- and listens as they spell out the truth, as they whisper, scream, remain silent about it.

It's a scary truth sometimes, a sad one most of the time, a lonely one always. 

Janice is so young when he marries her mother. Naturally, she isn't, not quite, not anymore then but she still looks so young. She looks happy too and he supposes that's the important thing. He loves her, loves her so much that he knows that her uncle is right. 

But he also loves her so much that he can't not show her. Can't not try to maker her understand. She deserved the truth, in all its horror, in all its beauty, so plainly written on the sky with dotted circles and arrows and lines and he tries not to cry when her uncle tells him that he is putting her in danger.

Janice is still so young when she comes home from school and is silent. She is never silent, not Janice. She asks, she pries, she questions and she says that she wants to be like her uncle when she's grown up.

She loves her uncle. But she is silent that day and her mother is worried and he is worried and if her uncle was here, he'd be worried too. And later when he reads to her before going to bed, books he keeps carefully hidden, islands of single lithic truths written on paper that even other people can -should at least- see, she asks him.

“Why did you lie to me?”

He looks at her and he wants to be surprised. 

“I didn't lie.”

A searching look and then she shakes her head with determination.

“You did! You said there is something in that room that's almost never opens next to the broken vending machine in my school. But there is nothing. The other kids said it, my teacher said it, Ce-”.

Sometimes,” and he hates himself for interrupting her “sometimes people think they know something. But they don't actually do.”

She twists her mouth like her mother does, like her uncle does and then she looks away. He sits and waits for her answer.

“So there is something in that room?” she asks finally and he nods. Maybe its relief he feels. Maybe it's guilt. It has been always hard to tell.

She nods too and she tells him to finish her story and so he does. He does not quite forget their conversation afterward, stores it away rather in those dusty parts of the mind where nobody bothers spending too much time. His brave little girl, he just thinks. He'd show her the truth and then she could see everything.

He gets a call three days later at work and Janice's mother is crying. Steve doesn't cry, he just holds the phone in his hand and stares as the world around him closes in, a fixed point where sound, vision and everything exists in only one moment, one sentence, one truth.  
“Janice got hurt.”

He still stares into nothing at the hospital. He is not sure how he got here, he does not care. Janice's mother has stopped crying. Her lips are trembling, moving maybe, but no sounds come out. Janice's uncle comes a few minutes later and he hugs Janice's mother, tight and long, before turning to Steve.

“This is your fault.” Cecil says. And Steve says nothing. 

It's two hours before they are allowed to go in and Janice is small on the bed and she looks so young. Pale and barely there under the tubes and so young and then Steve cries.

“She tried to go into some room at her school. She'll probably make it.”

He sits next to her and he holds her hands and does not look to see if the arrows and dotted lines and circles are moving outside the window of her room.

They are telling a truth only Steve can hear, one he will never show Janice. He loves her too much.


End file.
